Brave New World
by LilLolaBlue
Summary: It's a Brave New World for Eddie Blake. The Depression and the war are over. Sally's married, but that's a joke. She'll come around. And he's the All American Hero. Eddie's got money, time and plans. Big plans. Watch out, world. Here comes the Comedian.
1. A Hero's Welcome

**BRAVE NEW WORLD**

**Chapter One: A Hero's Welcome**

**Prelude: New York City, 1940**

**I: Eddie**

Eddie had fallen asleep on the couch in his costume, with a half-drunk bottle of beer in his hand.

Again.

He almost went outside in costume when he heard Ivan "Bear" Stavrogin, Aggie and Edie Blake's crazy Russkie old man, honking the horn on the garbage truck outside.

Then he remembered he had to change his clothes.

Half-asleep, with two fingers on one hand taped together and his nose taped up, Eddie threw on a pair of his overalls from his construction worker days over his holey undershirt and threadbare shorts, put on his boots, a plaid shirt, and his cracked, ancient sheepskin and corduroy welder's coat, that was too small for him.

He jammed on a watch cap onto his head, and staggered out into the frosty morning.

Eddie climbed into the garbage truck, with a burlap sack in his hands.

"I would say good morning, but it is piece of shit morning. Piece of shit morning for piece of shit job. I tell your sisters, I make two, three times as much money doing odd jobs as on truck. Do they listen? No." Ivan said.

"Hey, if youse can make that kind of bread, dump this shit job and tell them you got laid off." Eddie replied.

"Can't. You need good trash for little ones."

"Yeah, well, someday, Ivan, I won't hafta live like this."

"That's right. If I could weasel way out of Kolyma, you can weasel way out of poverty. Fucking cold this morning. Reminds me of Kolyma. Here. Drink some coffee. Put more hair on chest."

Ivan passed Eddie his thermos.

"Hey, there's whiskey in this coffee." Eddie commented, with mock surprise.

"Lousy heater in this truck. We have to keep warm somehow, yes?"

"You can say that again. It would be real nice if I had a decent fucking coat. I've had this one since I was 14, and it don't fit so good. Not to mention it ain't holding up too well."

Ivan had a welder's coat on the back of the passenger seat, and it was a real nice one.

It was sheepskin and leather, not corduroy, and the lining was thicker than Eddie's.

The coat looked fairly new, and it was of a size that would have fit Ivan well.

Eddie, too.

But Ivan had a coat on.

"That your coat on the back of my seat, Ivan?"

The young Russian smiled his grin full of gold teeth.

"No. Is your coat. I look for new coat for you a long time, and I finally find this one. On building site, in big trash bin. It was very dirty, smelly too, but I take it home and Edie, she cleaned it up for you."

Eddie took off his old coat and put the new one on.

It was as nice as it looked.

Too nice to have been garbage.

He put his hand in the pocket, and found the tags.

"Ivan, this fuckin' coat is stiff as a wedding dick. You didn't find it in no trash bin."

Ivan shrugged.

"Okay, so maybe I get it new."

"How much do I owe youse?"

"Forget it. I give this guy new tattoo, usual bullshit, naked mermaid on arm, and he doesn't want to pay me. Calls me Russkie bastard. So, I punch him in nose, and take coat, throw him out. You see there on collar, little pink stain where Edie can't get all blood out. You don't believe that, I got another story. You like my brother, Eddie. Without you and your family I would be starving in street. Even in Russia, I had no family. You guys are all the family I ever had. You take coat, alright?"

"Thanks."

"You welcome. Come on, give me back thermos. Kindness only goes so far."

Ivan's route took him through some of the wealthier neighbourhoods in Manhattan, and Eddie desperately needed some of the kinds of things rich people had a tendency to throw away when they were still good.

Clothes for Mickey and Jimmy, who were growing like weeds.

Maybe some toys.

Clothes for himself, too.

He was still growing like a weed. Eddie was about three inches taller than he had been six months ago, and his shirt size had gone up twice.

That morning, he made a pretty good score.

He found a pair of boots and a pair of work pants that would fit him, and a couple of sweaters and a coat that would fit Mickey and a pair of pants that would fit Jimmy. He was hoping to find a dress for Allie, but he came across a little girl's sweater and a couple of skirts, so that was something. He picked up a toy fire-truck that was just old and dirty, not broken, and a Westinghouse toaster that he bet was just tossed out because it was last year's model, and a few magazines that Ruthie might like to look at, and a pair of shoes in her size that were in better shape than the ones she was wearing.

Best of all was a nice couch that had just been put out.

The couch they had was an old piece of shit with tape over where the springs were trying to come out. It was ugly, lumpy and it stunk when it got hot out, so this couch was a great improvement.

Eddie had put all the reward money he got for "capturing" some wanted fugitive from Chicago into buying the house in Bensonhurst, but he couldn't afford to furnish it; they'd had to bring over all the old shit from the apartment.

Capturing.

Eddie recognised the SOB from the wanted posters at the precinct.

They said dead or alive, and dead was easier on Eddie.

The guy was wanted for murder, anyway, he was some half-assed mobster who blew up another half-assed mobster's car with a detonator, even though he saw the guy had his wife and kids in it with him.

Two in the head, and Eddie had the money to get the fuck out of the old apartment.

And they said crime didn't pay.

Ivan helped him bring in the new couch and they took out the old one and threw it on the truck.

That was the last of the old shitty furniture, and good riddance to it.

After Ivan left, Eddie rousted the kids out of bed, and got their breakfast going.

Ruthie, who was the oldest, helped him pack lunches, and he sent them all off to school, and then did the dishes.

Eddie spent about an hour in the kitchen washing the clothes in Ma's old washtub, using her old washboard and the lye soap she taught him how to make.

After that, he took the wash outside to hang it out to dry.

It was clear, but freezing, a real gorgeous morning to be fucking around with ice-cold clothes and rickety clothespins in fingerless gloves.

By then, it was nine o' clock, and he had to go to work.

Eddie didn't work construction, anymore, he drove a truck for Napier Chemical, making deliveries in the New York Metro Area, as well as to Atlantic City and Philadelphia.

The old beater of a car he'd bought for fifty bucks from the guy who sold him the house was stone fucking dead, and with the money he made selling it for scrap he bought a used motorcycle, cheap, from the local precinct.

It had been a cop bike, so it ran pretty good, and that was how he was getting around, these days.

He got to Napier Chemical around 10, which was the time they expected him to come in.

Crazy Jack's father, Dr. Angus Napier, and Jack himself.

Crazy Jack wasn't there that morning, and the old man was in the lab, as usual.

He had left Eddie's work order on the desk, so Eddie punched in, got his keys and went out to the garage.

As usual, they were still loading.

"C'mon, you fucks, I'm supposedta be in Philly by one, half past at the latest, and you're still fucking around."

That was Eddie's way of saying good morning, and the other guys knew it.

He stood around with them and smoked cigarettes and drank coffee until the truck was loaded, and then he headed out.

Eddie made good time getting to Philly, because he drove like he did everything else, aggressively.

After he made his delivery, he had enough time to stop by this broad's apartment, for a quick screw while her husband was at work.

She made him lunch, and then he got on the road again, promising he'd be back later on that week.

The rest of the day's deliveries were all in the five boroughs, so it was a lot of laying on the horn and shouting out the window.

Some prick in a Lincoln cut him off right in the middle of Central Park West, and Eddie almost rammed the guy, which, driving a truck full of industrial chemicals would not have been so hot.

Almost rammed him, but this asshole insisted Eddie was the one who put the dent in his bumper that Eddie had been staring at the whole time they were stuck at the redlight trying to make a fucking left.

This asshole, your Joe College type of asshole, with his I play football half-assed muscles, he came right up to the truck.

"Look what you did to my car, you lousy Mick bastard! Get outa that truck, I'll knock your block off."

"Okay, pal, if youse fuckin' insists."

Eddie got out of the truck.

He took off his gloves and his hat as well as his new coat; he didn't want to get blood all over it.

Joe College wasn't too bad of a fighter, but he was no match for Eddie Blake.

Eddie wasn't going to take him apart, but the stupid bastard wouldn't stay down, and the way things went, somebody got the beat cop.

"Alright, fellas, break it up! Break it up! What's this, a car accident?" the cop wanted to know.

Joe College sniffed some blood and snot back up into his broken nose.

"This guy rammed my car with his truck, then he broke my nose! I wanna press charges!"

"You lyin' sack of shit!" Eddie exploded, and the cop had to put his nightstick against Eddie's neck to restrain him.

"Take it easy, son! Take it easy! Take it easy, or I'll hafta take you in!"

"Yeah, but officer, look at that little tiny ding, an' then look at my truck! This jerk rammed somebody else's car parkin' his heap of shit, an' he wants to hang it on me so my boss hasta pay for it! Look, officer, I'm a workin' man. My Ma an Pop are dead, and I got two brothers an' two sisters at home ta raise. If youse takes me in, there ain't nobody in the world ta look after them. Ya gotta believe me. He cut me off, an' I nearly crashed the truck! An' he started the fight!"

The beat cop looked at the skid marks on the road behind the truck, and looked at the dent in the Lincoln.

He asked to see both of their lisences, and told them to get back in their vehicles.

Eddie waited, impatiently, drumming his fingers on the dashboard.

Then he saw the cop writing a ticket to Joe College, and laughed to himself.

The cop let the Lincoln drive away, and brought Eddie's licence back.

"You any relation to Lieutenant Edward Morgan, lad?"

"He was my grandfather."

"He was a good cop. It killed him, you know, when your mother married that devil Mickey Blake. When did she pass on?"

"In thirty-six."

"And you, takin' care of her little ones. God bless you, lad. You can go on your way, this time. But, next time you have trouble with a punk like that, you want to call for a policeman, not break his nose."

"Thanks, officer."

Eddie finished his deliveries, dropped the truck off and punched out at five, then rode back home on his motorcycle, where the kids were waiting for their dinner.

After he cooked dinner, he brought the washing in, and gave everybody all of their new stuff.

Ruthie did the dishes, and at first, the radio wouldn't work, but after he fooled with it for awhile Eddie got it working, and he got a few hours to himself with the kids, to listen to the radio and have a few beers.

The night before, Eddie came home from patrol at two in the morning, and Ivan honked the horn for him at three-thirty, and he was tired, but he knew he couldn't catch a nap until later.

He put the little kids to bed around eight.

Then, after Allie and Jimmy went off to bed, while Mickey was finishing his homework on the new couch, Eddie sat down at the kitchen table with Ruthie, so she could show him what they showed her in school that day.

Eddie had dropped out of school in the eighth grade, but he didn't want to go through his whole life being a big, dumb Mick. He had a quick mind, and read a lot of books on his own, taught himself things, and Ruthie would always show him the stuff she learned in school, every day.

You were only going to get so far with a mask on using muscle, then you had to rely on brains; you couldn't be a moron with an 8th grade education and expect to ever be anything better than a small time punk, yourself.

Ruthie and Mickey went to bed at ten, and that's when Eddie took a cat-nap on his new couch.

At 11, he got up, put on his costume and went out on patrol.

Afterwards, around two, he made another back door man stop at the apartment of a broad he had once saved from a gang of muggers and rapos.

He came up the fire escape and she let him in through the bedroom window.

She didn't know his name, just that he was the Comedian, but she got a kick out of it that all he left on was the mask, and just like the other broads he had stashed around town, she didn't mind having a good time, no questions asked.

Eddie got back home around three, had another beer and some leftovers and went to bed.

He'd be up at six, to start the whole damn thing over again.

. Still, money was starting to come in; things wouldn't always be like this.

Sometimes, he wondered, if he became as famous a mask as Superman, would ask him, tell us, Comedian, what made you decide to become a superhero?

Maybe he would tell them it was because he liked working nights.

Yeah, that was good enough.

**New York City, 1945**

**I: Sally**

"Eddie, what the fuck are you doing here?"

"What, after all those letters, this is what I get? I just got off the fuckin' boat. I ain't even gone home to see the kids yet."

Sally closed her bathrobe tighter.

"No, I mean, Jesus, you came here first? To see me? Lemme put something on, wait a minute."

The door closed and opened again in about five minutes.

"C'mon in. I'm makin' some coffee. Jesus, look at you! You're like a brick wall."

"Yeah, I know. None of my civvies are gonna fit me. Good thing I can afford ta buy new clothes, now."

When she brought him the coffee, she had to tell it to him, straight.

"Look, Eddie, this don't mean you and I are going to be the best of friends."

"Yeah, I know, Sal. I fucked that up a long time ago. I'll drink my coffee and go. You were just the first person I wanted to see. I carried this one letter around with me the whole time. I wanted ta give it to youse in person."

When he left, Sally noticed there was a creased, dirty, well-worn envelope sitting on her table.

She opened it.

_Dear Sal, _

_ If you're reading this letter, either I'm dead or the war's over._

_ I kinda hope it's the second one._

_ I been carrying it in my pack for years, just in case._

_ Anyway, I just wanted to tell you that you were the only real steady girl I ever had. I fucked a lotta broads, sure, but when we used to go out I always had a real good time._

_ I'm sorry I fucked everything up, and I'm sorry I hurt you. I was just a dumb kid and I was never in love before, but I was a mean dumb kid and I just fucked everything up. _

_ Still, I always thought of you as my girl. _

_ And I know you don't want any part of that._

_ If I ain't dead and the war's over, I want you to know, even if you marry some fucking stiff and you never talk to me again, I still will._

_ If you change your mind, you know where the house in Bensonhurst is._

_ If I am dead, well, maybe you can come and see me sometime._

_ Just don't piss on my grave, alright?_

_ Eddie_

In spite of herself, Sally bit her lip, and her eyes filled up with tears.

She went to put the letter in a drawer with the other letters Eddie had sent her.

She just couldn't bring herself to throw them away.

"Jesus, Eddie, I wish that son of a bitch father of yours would rise up out of his grave, so I could kill the motherfucker a second time." She said, closing the drawer.

**II: Sophie**

"Sophie, I still think you should go see an analyst."

Sophie Kauffmann tossed her fork and knife onto her plate.

"Fuck you, Magda!"

Magda, her older sister, looked like she was going to have a stroke, and hen-pecked grey-faced Ralph Schmidt, her husband, hunched over further in her seat as Sophie's two nephews, Sol and Gene, goggled at her in something like awe at what she had just said.

At the dinner table.

To their mother, who tried to run the place like Stalin ran Russia.

"Sophie! Not in front of the boys!"

"What? They're boys, Magda! Behind your back they swear and smoke cigarettes and try to find pictures of naked girls! I don't need a fucking shrink! What would he know about what I went through? And shrinks are for people who feel bad! I don't feel bad. I feel good. Every time I think about all the fucking Nazis I killed, I feel great. And every morning I wake up in my own bed in my own place in my own city, I feel fucking great! I don't need a shrink because I'm enjoying my life, just because I'm embarrassing you and your hand-wringing, perfect little friends who never saw a minute of action! You wait till Eddie gets back, you'll see how I embarrass you. We fought that war, we won that war, and we are entitled to a little fucking fun. And, as God is my witness, Magda Schmidt, I am going to paint this town red from one end to the other, and fuck you if you don't like it! Fuck you and everybody who fucking thinks like you!"

Sophie looked over at Ralph; he was smiling into his plate.

"I'm sorry, boys. I'm sorry, Ralph."

"You're sorry? You're always sorry! Sit down, _meshugga_, finish your dinner! Such language! I can tell you were a soldier." Magda said

Sophie sat back down and resumed eating.

"Aunt Sophie, tell us about the time that you and the Comedian and Wolverine blew up the bridge when the Nazis were crossing it with their tanks and their trucks, and everything." Gene asked.

"Ralph, do you mind?"

"Mind? Sophie, you can always talk about killing Nazis at my table. Be quiet, Magda. This is more interesting than what that old bag Mrs. Feldstein told you in the laundry room."

Sophie Kauffmann came into her majority when she was still fighting her way out of Slaughterhouse Europe, thereby inheriting a very sizeable chuck of change that her father who had vanished into the Holocaust had left her in trust with his New York lawyers.

She began the war as a refugee, and ended it as a decorated hero, Sergeant Kauffmann of the Invaders, who fought along side the celebrated Wolverine and the even more celebrated Comedian.

It was a bittersweet victory, considering that Cap and Bucky were not there to share it with them.

For Bucky, though, considering how his experiences in the war shattered him, it might have been for the best.

At least he died with his friend and with his boots on, a genuine American hero.

The war ended for her on VE day, May 8th, and she was demobbed and returned to New York City by May 20th.

Home again at last, she felt she'd earned that money and a rest.

Her sister, who never saw so much as a gunshot of the war that destroyed the civilisation that had existed since 1066, wanted to wallow in the misery of an event she didn't have to see.

Sophie wanted no part of that.

She had witnessed it.

She mourned her father, and her mother, her younger brothers and sisters, but she had run with them and prayed with them and hid with them and hid herself when the Nazis came.

"This is my whole family, Mein Herr."

Those were the last words she heard her father speak.

What could she do?

He was giving his life for hers.

Sophie ran, so that her father's sacrifice would not be in vain.

She kept running.

And while her fat sister with her fat ankles was home tut-titting to her fat, long-suffering husband and her children who were unfortunate enough to have her as a mother about how hoarrrible it all was, Sophie had her war.

It was a vicious, brutal, hand to hand war, of fighting and killing, alternating with running and hiding, eating what she could, sleeping when she could, killing men she didn't want for trying to touch her, leaving those she did, knowing they were as good as dead.

What the hell did her sister know about that?

What right did she have to tell Sophie anything?

The only thing Sophie really wanted from Magda was her aged cat, Gracie.

She inherited the family place on the Upper East Side, but Sophie had no wish to live with their ghosts.

She sold it for a small fortune, and was able to buy new clothes, and a townhouse in the Village, and a car, and rugs and dishes and furniture and everything, without even touching the principal of her inheritance.

The family lawyer had been her trustee, and she retained him to manage her money, a task with which Sophie was an active participant. Her father had taught her all about finance, real estate, stocks and investments since she was a little girl.

Sophie imagined that eventually, she would go to college, probably for a business degree, marry her old sweetheart, Max Grossmann, who had waited for her all these years, and maybe open a restaurant or a deli with him.

But, for right now, she just wanted to enjoy herself, have a good time.

Max understood.

Even about Eddie.

Max didn't have a cent to his name; he had grown up in the Bronx and spent the war years in the Air Force, and because he was poor, her family, especially that social climbing, false, phoney bitch Magda had never wanted her to get serious about Max, but she loved him.

He was a good man, a wise man, good as gold.

She went out with him some nights, and what he did other nights she didn't ask about, and vice versa.

"We're young, we just got back from the worst war in the history of mankind. Someday we'll get married, we'll be married forever, then we'll be old and married. Let's have a good time while we can, huh, Soph?" Max joked.

She felt she was entitled, after what she'd been through.

During the day she read books, listened to records and went to the movies, enjoying freedom and security for the first time since 1938.

She went out at night and had a good time, the best time she could have.

V-J Day in August and the end of the war made her sister happy, it made everybody happy. They were fools.

They thought it really meant something, some kind of great moral victory.

All it meant was that Hitler was dead and the world was free of his mad ambitions, but you couldn't put the rabbit back into the hat.

Things would get better, but they would never be what they were before.

Not after that kind of catastrophe.

Europe would rebuild, America would recover, Russia would regroup.

But that which was rotten would still be rotten, rotten under the surface.

Only a matter of time before the war's real legacy showed through.

But, despite what Sophie knew, she didn't care.

So the world was rotten, so what?

It had always been rotten, it was just getting rottener by degrees. People were still just people and everyone wanted to breathe a sigh of relief and have a good time and rebuild and what was wrong with that?

Nothing at all.

Magda wanted to get her little chicks together and buy them little flags and go to the parade and wave them and cheer, and she probably thought her sister was turning over a new leaf, going with her to the big parade through Times Square.

Sophie, however, was only looking for the stars and stripes in one place.

She'd met a lot of men during the war, in Germany, and back home in New York, but she only met one who she thought was crazy enough that she could really live it up with, a man who saw things the way she saw them.

You know, the way they really were.

Col. Edward Morgan Blake, USMC Special Forces, the Comedian.

So, Eddie was now a big national hero, so what?

She knew that was how he felt about it.

Eddie cared about four things.

His brothers and sisters, having a good time, doing his job and getting laid.

Smart man.

Ticker tape fell out of the sky on every hopeful deluded soul in the city who would fiddle while Rome burned as they cheered and waved flags.

Sophie cheered and waved a flag, too.

She fought for her country, and killed for it, and now she was going to reap the rewards, goddamnit.

Everybody waved at Eddie, everybody cheered for Eddie; he was their last living Red, White, and Blue War Hero Masked Avenger Superhero. He sat in the back of the big black car, smirking and shaking his head most of the time.

He was probably thinking about the money.

When the car stopped, briefly, a bunch of women and girls mobbed it, screaming and crying.

That was all for Sophie.

She was not about to beg.

Sophie stepped back from them, and was going to just go home, but then there was an awful commotion, and when she turned around, she saw Eddie had made them stop the car.

"Hiya, Soph! C'mon, get in the car."

"Eddie, they asked me to be in this parade and I said no."

"Yeah, I can see why. Where you livin?"

"Townhouse at the corner of 6th and Bleeker. In the Village. I'm in the biggest apartment, it's on the top floor."

"What's your number?"

"East 6th-4500."

"Okay! Talk to ya soon, Soph."

Sophie sat impatiently through dinner, where Magda had to cluck over her, take her back to Greenpoint, with Sol and Gene who wanted to eat in front of the radio, and doughy, watery-eyed, near-sighted poor unfortunate Ralph in his saggy, baggy grey flannel suit and his uninteresting tie.

She drove like a maniac all the way home, but when she got there she went to unlock the door and found it was already open.

Sophie wasn't one of these idiots who kept a spare key in the mailbox or under the doormat so anybody could just break in, so she knew that somebody had to have picked the lock.

She reached up under her skirt, pulled the service automatic out of her garter, but as she came around the front door, she saw the thick leather breastplate with the metal stats and stripes shields on the shoulders hanging on her coatrack.

And the smell of cigars hung in the air.

Expensive cigars, now.

"Eddie, you son of a bitch, you broke my lock!" she yelled.

"What are you gonna do, Soph? Shoot me?"

He was in the kitchen, listening to some grainy blues record on the radio, and not only had he kicked her door in, he had also taken the liberty of making himself a sandwich and leaving the plate with crumbs all over it on the sink and the bread on the counter.

Worse, he had found the cigar box in the bedroom, and he was smoking her tea.

"Get your feet off my table, you shanty Mick bastard! Gimme that reefer! Don't smoke it all, you know what that cost me?"

"Relax, Doll. I got an in with the cops, I can getcha better stuff than that. For free. Don'cha yell at me, ya crazy Jew bitch. Where the fuck have you been all day? I called you about six times."

"At my sister's. Suffering. So, what did you come here lookin' for? A good time?"

"Yeah. Best time in the city, right?"

"What's that supposed to mean, you son-of-a-bitch?" she asked, grinning from ear to ear.

He put her up on the table, the table wasn't high enough, he put her on the counter, the counter was too low, she was laughing with her arms around his neck and her legs around his waist as he carried her into the living room, where the sofa was one size fits all.

"I thought you forgot about me, Eddie."

"How could I forget a classy broad like you? It's been a busy month, an' I didn't know where to find youse. You ain't in the phone book."

"Well, you found me now. What are you gonna do with me?"

"What the fuck d'you think?"

He tumbled her into the couch and they stripped naked and fucked, noisy and sweaty and hard.

She was still asleep when he carried her upstairs and they were in bed for the rest of the day, all night, and well into the next morning, although there was some sleeping involved.

That night, they went out to some clubs, and got drunk and then went to the movies and he gave her the time in the movie theatre and they went to the Automat at three in the morning and she drove him home to Bensonhurst at dawn.

She parked behind a shiny new black Cadillac.

"When did they start making cars again?"

"They ain't. Not till October. This is one of the prototypes. I said somethin' to a reporter about how I was gonna buy me a Cadillac when I got home, and they had this baby, all new and shiny and ready for me to drive away when I got off the airplane comin' home. I didn't even hafta pay for it. I mean, I got alla this money, now, Soph, ya wouldn't believe it. Every time somebody wants ta talk to me, they gimme a big check. I'll never have to buy the kids clothes second-hand, or put newspapers in the bottoms of my shoes again. It's good to be the king."

"I'll bet it is, Eddie. Can I ask you a question without you getting insulted?"

"Try me."

"Do you know anything about having large sums of money?"

"Me? Fuck no. I just opened a bank account for the foist time when I was in DC, so I could put alla them checks, sand alla this dough I keep getting someplace. I mean, I got two grand hidden in my boots, and a suitcase with ten grand in it under the driver's seat. I don't know what the fuck to do with it."

"Well, my father was an investment banker who played the stock market. I know a lot about money. You should let me help you manage yours."

"Yeah, well I figured I was gonna hafta find somebody to do it, but I didn't know who I was gonna trust. But I trust you, Soph. So, we gonna do this again, sometime?'

"You bet your ass! You and me, Eddie, we got years of misery, abuse, and bullshit to make up for. We're going to paint this town red from one end to the other!"

Eddie grinned at her.

"Sounds good to me, Soph. You think I can afford to keep smokin' these kinda cigars?"

"How much money do you have in your new bank account, Eddie?"

He got his bank book out of the pocket in his brand new gangster-looking suit, which he told her Macy's had given him for free, along with five others just like it, just for wearing it in a picture they took of him for Life magazine.

With the mask on, of course.

Sophie opened up the bankbook.

Seven figures.

"Do you have any plans for what you're going to do with all this money?"

"I gotta buy some new clothes. Not this flashy shit, regular stuff. Buy some for the kids. I'm gonna get a TV set, too. An' a new radio. Maybe get the kids a few things. I got hookups for a washer an' dryer, so I'm gonna get those, too. Maybe a freezer. An' then, I guess I gotta set up a college fund for alla them. Thinkin' about gettin' myself some fancy joint downtown, you know, to take broads to. An' now I've got some dough, I might take some of those night classes they advertise in the paper. Get my diploma. It looks bad, a guy like me havin' an 8th grade education, even though, I'm a lot fuckin' smarter than that. I don't want these wiseass reporters makin' me look like I'm just some big, dumb Mick. I dunno, Soph. Nothin' too special. I'd get a car for Ruthie to knock around in, but I got a free car from Ford, too."

"You don't want to buy a mansion on Long Island, or a home in the country, or in the south of France?"

"Naaah. Waste of money. I live pretty good. So do the kids. Now we can just live a little better."

"You're a smart man, Eddie. In that case, you can afford to buy all the expensive cigars and expensive booze you want."

"Good. Hey, Soph, y'wanna come back tonight, an' have some dinner? I gotta cook for the kids, anyway, and you might as well meet 'em."

"Sure. Why the hell not?"

Sophie had heard about Eddie's brothers and sisters that he had been responsible for since he was 14, and raised since he was 16, because a steady stream of letters and pictures passed back and forth between them, during the war years.

When he was on furlough, he sent her a picture of all of them, outside the house in Bensonhurst, with his older sisters and their common-law husband.

The place looked just like it had in the picture.

When Eddie came to the door to let her in, three of them, she could tell from their pictures, Mickey, who was 13, Jimmy, 11, and Allie, who was 10, were sitting around the radio.

"Ruth, get off the fuckin' phone, we got company!" Eddie yelled.

"In a minute, Eddie! Jeeziz!"

Eddie went into the kitchen and Sophie followed him.

On the phone, in the kitchen was a pretty teenager of medium height, with strawberry blond hair and blue eyes, in a plaid skirt and a sweater and a nice pair of spectator pumps, reading somebody the riot act.

"…just who the fuck do you think I am, Nick, the whore of humanity! Don't you even think about showing your face here again! If I see you on my block, I'll beat you with a baseball bat! You lousy, no-good, dirty sunnuvabitch Wop bastard, I'll goddamn cripple your ass! You get me? Fine. Fuck you! Good bye!"

Ruth Blake slammed the phone down.

"Asshole!" she yelled.

"So, I guess Nicky ain't comin' around, anymore, huh?" Eddie chuckled

"Eddie, you kill people, right?"

"Not on cue, Ruthie. Why?"

"Well, can you at least beat him up for me? We went out last night, right, and you know what he did? He brought some of his asshole buddies around. He wanted me to do it to all of them! All of 'em! And when I told him to fuck off, he put his hands on me, and I punched him out. Then he dumped me out of the car, and I had to walk home!"

Eddie got the look on his face that he wore when he was about to do something unspeakable.

"He did what? WHAT? Make yourself at home, Soph. I'll be right back. C'mon Ruthie. Bring the bat. Oh, Ruthie, this is Sophie. I told youse about her. We was in the war together."

"Nice to meet you. Eddie wrote us about you all the time. You think you could watch the little ones for us?" Ruth asked.

"Oh sure. Have a nice fight. Whack the bastard once for me." Sophie said, cheerily.

She went into the living room, introduced herself to the younger kids, and sat down to listen to the radio.

Eddie and his sister were home in about twenty minutes, and Ruth came into the living room to listen to the radio with her siblings and Sophie.

Sophie didn't ask, the bat was nowhere in sight, nobody had any blood on them, and neither Eddie or Ruth said anything.

"Guess I'll go cook dinner."

"I'll do it, Eddie."

"Naw, Ruthie, you stay put. I like bein' in my own fuckin' house, cookin' my food in my kitchen, knowin' I won that fuckin' war an' that cocksucker Hitler is dead and smokin' an' toastin' in Hell with Pop."

"Are we gonna have leftovers again, Eddie?" Mickey yelled.

"No. But if you don't like what I'm cookin', you know where the door is, right?"

"I'm just sayin', Eddie, holy crap, three days of leftovers."

"I liked it." Allie said.

"What do you know? You're a girl." Mickey told her.

"Hey! Can that shit!" Ruth told him.

"Did you and Eddie get that Nicky guy? Didja? Didja?" Jimmy asked.

"Yeah. Turn up the radio."

Ruth set the table, and after their program was over, they took what were probably their usual spots at the table.

All of them smoked, even the two younger kids, and Eddie was smoking while he was cooking, so Sophie didn't feel bad about lighting up.

When the food came to the table, they all put out their butts, so Sophie did, too.

"Is this chicken good enough for youse, Mickey? Do you think the potatoes will be warm enough? Or did you want me to sit on them for ya?" Eddie joked.

"Awww, I wanna go get Chinese food." Mickey replied, laughing.

They just passed the plates around, so Sophie went along.

"So, Ruthie took us all to the parade! I can't believe you were in the car with Superman! What's he really like?" Jimmy asked.

"Just like he is in the comics, Jimmy. Squeaky fuckin' clean."

"So, Eddie, can I borrow the new Caddy on Friday?" Ruth asked.

"Sure you can. After I'm dead. Take the Ford to the drive-in. You got another boyfriend on the string?"

"You got no room to talk, Eddie. But no, not really. I'm goin' to get back together with Dom. You remember, I wrote to you about Dom."

"Boots Marcano's brother, Dom?"

"Yeah."

"Good. He's a good guy. So is Boots. Not like that asshole Nicky. Don't he have a car?"

"No. Boots does. But he's usin' it on Friday."

"Take the Ford."

"Uh, Eddie? You know, uh, about the medicine cabinet? The box is empty."

"Bedroom drawer, Ruthie. You didn't get to know Nicky all that well, didja?"

"Fuck no! That's why I punched him out."

"He's like his two-bit, small-time, mobbed-up hood father. No fuckin' good."

"What's in the medicine cabinet in the box?" Jimmy asked.

"Mickey, don't you dare!" Ruth cried.

"He hasta know sometime!" Mickey protested

"That's enough! Not at the table, not when we have company, not when he's 11 and not in front of Allie." Eddie told them.

"But I know what's in the medicine cabinet in the box, Eddie. And you shouldn't say it out loud, Mickey. Not when I'm eating. It's too gross." Allie replied.

"Hey, Eddie, if Ruthie felt that way, you wouldn't have had to beat Nicky up!" Mickey cracked.

"You little prick!" Ruth howled, jumping to her feet with her fork in her hand.

Eddie slammed his fork and knife down and they all got quiet.

Ruth sat down

"Alright, that's fuckin' it! You always gotta show off, dontcha, Mickey? You got more than just Pop's name, that's for sure. Okay, wiseass. Upstairs. Now."

"Can I take my food?"

"No. If you was hungry, you should have been puttin' your food in your mouth, not flappin' your jaws. Upstairs. Right fuckin' now."

She couldn't get over it.

Those kids listened to Eddie like he was their father.

Well, he had raised them, after all.

After dinner, a man came to deliver the new TV set, and Sophie helped Eddie decide where to put it.

Eddie was just as transfixed by the TV as his younger brothers and sisters were, and he called his older sisters, Edie and Allie to come over with Ivan, and they all stared at the thing like it was made of gold and dispensing the wisdom of the ages.

Ben Kaufmann had a television set in 1935, so it was nothing new to Sophie. However, in 1935 when she had been living on the Upper East Side in an apartment with a television, a private laundry room with attendant, for all the tenants and a live-in maid, Eddie and his family had been living in a tiny, crowded hovel in East New York, in the most grinding poverty imaginable with a tyrannical father who made the bad situation of being poor, Irish, and broke during the heart of the Depression a whole lot worse.

"You guys want one for your place? I'll buy you one." Eddie offered his sisters and the Russian.

"Can you afford that, Eddie?" Aggie Blake asked.

"Ask my banker. Can I afford that, Soph?"

"Sure you can, Eddie." She told him.

"See? It's only the best for the Blake family, from here on out." Eddie promised them.

He looked as happy as she had ever seen him, just then, in his living room, with his whole family, promising them all that he would take care of them, just like he always had.

Only now, he knew he could do it.

In later years, when people would accuse Eddie of being all kinds of horrible things, of being a bad man, she would remember that night, and whoever and wherever they were, Sophie would tell them they were full of shit.

**III: Hollis**

The weekly meeting of the Minutemen began, as it usually did, all the remaining members in attendance.

Sally was supposed to be retired, but she was there, anyway.

In fact, it was hard for anyone to see how she had retired, as much as she still seemed to work.

Dollar Bill had died, so it was him, and Sally and Captain Metropolis, Hooded Justice, the Silhouette, and Mothman.

Nelly was about to call the meeting to order when the familiar smell of cigar smoke announced an unexpected arrival.

"Well, I see you boys were busy while I was off savin' the world."

He looked like a completely different person than the punk kid in the yellow boiler suit.

In six years, that rotten punk kid had grown up to be a big bad man, every bit as big as Rolf, dressed in armour made of steel and black leather, sporting the stars and stripes on his shoulders.

He was in the Invaders, and fought alongside Captain America, and with Cap dead, he was probably America's most famous and celebrated superhero next to Batman and Superman.

Eddie Blake had his masked mug on every magazine cover imaginable. He was a man who had the ear of Prime Ministers and Presidents, and if rumour had it right, he worked with the CIA and military intelligence, and was assisting Nick Fury in founding a super secret, quasi-military international espionage and law enforcement agency.

But that didn't change Hollis Mason's opinion of the man.

He might have grown up to be a war hero, military strategist, expert in covert operations, and even a helluva detective and a crime fighter, but to Hollis Mason's eyes, the big man in the leather and steel costume wasn't all that different from the skinny punk kid in the yellow boiler suit.

He was still a swaggering, foul-mouthed, dirty- minded, cocky amoral asshole.

And Hollis Mason didn't often even think in cuss words.

"Just what do you think you're doing here, Blake? You ought to know you're not welcome." Hollis protested.

"Relax, Mason. I just dropped in ta say hello to alla youse, an' see who was still around."

"Well, you did. And now you can go."

The Comedian sat down.

"I'll go when I'm damn good and ready, Boy Scout. I got a little somethin' I wanna say to youse. Not alla youse. Just Mason and Mueller. I guess you fuckers thought ya had me pegged. He's a rotten punk kid, only a little better than the criminals he chases. Little bastard'll never amount to anything. If he don't end up in jail, himself, he'll be back on the construction site, or behind the wheel of that delivery truck, forever. That is if they don't find him on the docks with a knife in his ribs. Couldn't have been more wrong, couldja? And before you throw Sal in my face, Mason, lemme remind youse she ain't married ta you, and it's me she was writin' all through the war. I got time for you to come around, doll. Shit, I got alla time in the world. As for you, Mueller, if I had a shred of fuckin' proof that you are the Nazi I think you are, I'd kill ya where ya sit. But I don't. An' besides, I wouldn't want to make poor Nelly a widow."

The Comedian laughed at his own joke.

"Well, I guess that's about it. I just wanted to let you two know that I didn't turn out ta be the punk you figured I would. In fact, I outclass you two fuckers by a country mile."

Nelly laughed a little, and Hooded Justice gave him a dirty look.

Eddie put his boots up on the table, and lit up.

"Hiya Nelly. This big SOB still beatin' ya up, an you still likin' it?"

Captain Metropolis blushed.

"Well, I, ah…er… that is…"

"What? I'm just kiddin' youse. Takes all sorts ta make the world, my Ma used ta say. How 'bout you, Byron? Got that drinkin' under control?"

"I can quit any time I want to, Eddie." Mothman told him.

"I'll bet. I heard about what happened to Bill. That was a goddamn shame."

"We got the men who killed him." The Silhouette volunteered.

"Yeah, you prob'ly tracked 'em down yourself, and let the rest of these jerks share the credit. So, how 'bout that doll I seen you with, Ursula? Is she your new girl?"

"What about the doll I saw you with, Eddie?"

"Who, Sophie? We was in the war, together. Yeah, I guess she is my girl. How about that shit, huh? Listen, if you girls ever wanna man around, ya know, just for a change, I still live in the same place."

"What about your girl? Will she be at the party?"

"Sorry. Door only swings one way. But I know this broad downtown, she lives by the park, in one of those penthouses, this rich broad, she's up for anything. Whaddya say?"

"Eddie!" Hollis protested.

"Awww, put a fuckin' sock in it, Mason. Some of us like to get laid." Eddie protested.

"That's what I like about you, Eddie. You're a shameless pig. What the hell, I could use a laugh. How about Friday?" the Silhouette replied.

"After work?"

"After work."

"Fine. You bring the booze, I'll bring the reefers."

The Comedian got out of the chair.

"Well, I'll be seein' youse around. I'm goin' down to the docks. Gotta get back to work. Let these punks know the law is back in town."

And, as abruptly as he arrived, the Comedian left, in a cloud of cigar smoke and sarcastic laughter.

"Are you really going to have some depraved orgy with Eddie Blake and some woman you never met before, Ursula?" Hollis Mason asked.

"Actually, I think I know the girl he's talking about, Hollis. You do what you do for fun, and the rest of us do what we do."

"Ursula! Don't talk that way in front of Sally! She's a married woman, now."

Sally swallowed a laugh.

"It's alright, Hollis. I'm not offended."

"Well, that man is a menace." Hollis said.

"At least he's our menace. If he was on the other side, God help us all." Captain Metropolis replied.

The door opened again, and the Comedian leaned in.

"I almost forgot. You wanna go have a drink with me after work, Sal?"

Sally Jupiter shook her head.

"Go down to the docks and kill somebody, Eddie. And don't forget to duck when they shoot at you." She told him.

"You wanna come? I got a big tip off Moloch's movin' a huge shipment of dope in, tonight. He's gonna have a lot of muscle down there, tonight. Things might get real innarestin'."

"Oh yeah?" Sally replied.

She got up out of her chair.

"Sally, where are you going?" Hollis asked.

"To do my job. I got nothin' else to do tonight, anyway."

She reached into her bustier and pulled out a 9mm automatic.

Eddie winced.

"Jesus, Sal, that's too much for a guy to handle when he's wearin' iron underwear!"

"Yeah, you're a real laugh riot. You got an extra clip for this, Eddie?"

"In the car, sure."

"Let's go. But this is strictly business, buster. I'm not the wide-eyed would-be starlet I used to be. If you touch me, I'll shoot you right in the balls."

"Hey, Sal, I'd still pay good money to see youse in a movie. Mean an' every other guy in America. Especially the kind in the back rooms on 42nd Street."

Sally put the gun to the side of the Comedian's codpiece, where the zipper was.

Eddie put his hands up.

"Gee, Sal, how didja know where the zipper is? Ya musta been lookin' real hard."

Sally rolled her eyes.

"You just consider all this foreplay, don't you, Eddie, you crazy fuck? Well, you take a good look, because that's all you're going to get! C'mon, we got work to do. Pour some ice water down your codpiece and let's go."

"After youse. I insist."

"So you can look at my ass? Fat chance."

The Comedian and Silk Spectre left the building, in that order.

The Nite Owl watched the door for a few moments.

"Meeting adjourned." He finally said.

_(Author's Note: Portrait of The Comedian As A Young Man, eh? Well, this might get interesting. Especially for Sally. And, for those of who who are not yet acquainted with Sophie Kauffmann and what Eddie did with the Invaders, click to my profile and check out "Full Adamantium Jacket")_


	2. Paint The Town Red

**Chapter Two: Paint The Town Red**

**New York City, 1946**

**I: Eddie and Sally**

"Sally. Wake up, Sally. It's for you. It's that crazy asshole Eddie's crazy asshole girlfriend."

"You're all heart, Larry, ya know that? Hello, Sophie?"

"I'm sorry to wake you up, Sally, but, when was the last time you saw Eddie?"

Sally thought about it.

She and Eddie worked together, every once in awhile.

"Jeez, I'd say it was Monday. An' today's what, Friday?"

"Saturday. And I haven't seen Eddie since Wednesday. We went on a real toot, earlier this week, and we both ended up getting arrested."

"Arrested! Jesus Christ!"

"That's not all. I had so much to drink I had to have my stomach pumped. That's it, Sal. That's the last straw. I'm not gonna turn into a schoolgirl, but I gotta slow down."

"Yeah. So does Eddie. He makes the _Post_ once or twice a week and he's wearing out his goodwill with the public. Maybe he's still in jail."

"Well, that's why I'm calling you. The arresting officer, Hollis Mason, called Edie from the police station on Wednesday, and told her that Eddie wasn't gonna be home for awhile. She hasn't heard from him, since. I figured you might know this Mason guy."

"I do. I'll call you when I get to the bottom of it."

Sally hung up the phone, got out of bed, and started getting dressed.

"Where are you going?"

"Eddie's in trouble. Big trouble. Hollis might know something."

"What do you care?"

"It's business, Larry. Sometimes I work with Eddie. I'd like to make it more than sometimes."

Sally could see the dollar signs ringing in the cash register in Larry's head.

"Yeah! Say, that's an idea! The Comedian and the Silk Spectre, a team! Holy shit, Sal, that's a great idea. If we could find a way to pull Blake out of the gutter and clean him up a little bit, that kind of thing, we could be rich!"

Sally was about to ask Larry if that was all he could see, but she already knew the answer.

"Yeah, Larry. Don't wait up."

**Watchmen Headquarters**

When Sally got there, Hollis was the only one around.

"How did I know it would be you who'd come? Sally, listen, you don't owe that animal…"

"Hollis, listen to yourself! Eddie ain't an animal. He's a human being. He's a man, and he's got a family who depend on him. Not to mention he's the only mask in this city who'll take me seriously. Now, tell me what the fuck is going on!"

Hollis sighed.

"Well, I've seen it a million times before, being a cop in this city. With these young guys who become big in the pictures, or as a singer, or with a band. Their whole lives, they have nothing, they get a little money, they go a little crazy. Except Blake, he was more than a little crazy to begin with—"

"Hollis, I read the Post. I know Eddie's been havin' a little too much fun, lately. What happened on Wednesday night?"

"It was pretty bad, Sally. I don't know what kind of a bender him and his girl had been on, but they were higher than the Empire State Building when I arrested them. He was trying to give her the time in a sink. They didn't even have the presence of mind to do it in a stall. She went to the hospital, and we took the Comedian to jail. He was completely out of his mind. It took ten officers to get him into the cell, and once he was in there, he ripped the whole place to pieces and tried to tear the door off. When that didn't work he decided to use his head as a battering ram. I had to call Rolf and Nelly, and late at night, we went in with a shot that would knock out a horse and a straitjacket, but subduing him wasn't easy. We brought him back here, and got a doctor in. Not just to sew his head up, but because we thought there was really something wrong with him. Well, the doctor took a look in his eyes, and he got worried, so he took a blood test and found out that Blake had enough horse tranquiliser in his system to kill an elephant. Somebody in that filthy joint he was in doped him, good. They were trying to kill him, but all it did was make him crazy. And I mean crazy. So the doctor rushes him to the hospital, and they pump his stomach, and all these doctors are trying to figure out why he's not dead. So they've got medicine and fluids going in one arm, and something to keep him from getting up and destroying the place in the other, and meanwhile, I have to keep all this quiet and out of the papers. Well, last night, they took all the needles out of him, and he seemed pretty coherent. They're letting him out this afternoon."

"Why don't you let me go pick him up? I think I have a business proposition he might be interested in."

Hollis Mason's face turned fish belly white.

"Sally, you…you can't! He's…he's…"

"Eddie's the same goddamn sunnuvabitch he ever was. At least I know him. There's a lost scarier sons of bitches out there in the street I don't know. And since I'm too young to retire and too old to get another job, I've decided if I'm going to go out there and mix it up with every two tone sunnavabitch in New York, it'd do me good to have a bigger sunnuvabitch than they are on my side."

Sally wasn't sure if Hollis believed her, but he sent her off to Brooklyn General, anyway.

When Sally got there, Eddie was sitting on a bench in front of the hospital.

He had on a pair of boots, fatigue pants and a plaid shirt that was open.

There were a few drops of blood on his undershirt, dried and brown and old, and he had a bandage over his forehead, and two fingers taped together on both hands.

From far away, he looked tired, worn out, even lost.

Close up, he looked sort of pale and quiet, and he didn't even make a smart comment when he got in her car.

Ending up like he had, it shocked the cockiness out of him, but, Sally hoped, it has also convinced him, like Sophie had said, that he had to slow down.

"How you feelin', Eddie?"

"Like shit."

That was uncharacteristically brief.

"What, are you ashamed of yourself, or somethin'?"

"You goddamn well bet I am! Jesus H. Christ, I'm a grown man, 22 years old, I fought a fuckin' war, I'm raisin' four kids, I'm a goddamn national hero, I'm the Comedian, fa Chrissakes, and what have I been doin? Actin' like a punk teenager who's got a C-note burnin' a hole in his pocket from runnin' bootleg whiskey. Jesus Christ!"

Now he was angry.

That was something, it was better than seeing him look so defeated.

"Don't be so hard on yourself, Eddie. You never got to have a good time when you were a punk teenager. All you had in your pockets was balls. I knew you, remember?"

That made him smile a little.

"So whyzit you who's come to get me? Does this mean I'm finally offa red an' onta yellow?"

"Eddie, you never change. Look, the way I see it, you an' me, we both gotta problem. You been whoopin' it up a little too much, endin' up in the papers, an' now your reputation's in the crapper. But you're workin' every night you want to. Me, I'm America's Sweetheart. My reputation's solid gold. But everybody thinks I'm a fuckin' Twinkie, and Larry, well, he wants me to sell dish soap and underpants. So, I figure, if we start workin' together, that takes care of both of our problems."

Eddie looked at her for a minute like she was out of her mind, and then, he smiled pretty big.

"Business proposition, huh, Sal?"

"That's right, Eddie. Business."

He lit a cigar.

All the sudden he was Eddie, again.

Sally wasn't sure if that was a bad thing or a good thing.

"What about the Minutemen?"

"What about 'em? They wanna put me out to pasture. I don't wanna go. I'm in my prime, yunno?"

"I know, Sal. I got eyes."

"You got hands too, Eddie. Keep 'em the hell off me. I'll beat the fuck right outa you. An' in your case, that'd be quite a beating."

"Well, okay, partner, what d'you think I should tell the troops at home?"

"Tell 'em the truth, Eddie. Somebody drugged your drink and tried to kill you, an' you barely made it alive. They don't hafta hear the rest. And that's another thing. I don't expect you to turn into a priest. But, you think you got alla this hell bent for leather shit outa your system?"

"Yeah, Sal. I do."

"Why are you grinnin' at me like that, you jackass?"

"Just admit it, Sal. I don't give a fuck if ya never do a thing about it. But admit it. It ain't all business, is it?"

"No, Eddie. It ain't. For some goddamn unknown fuckin' reason, I always liked your company. We were good friends. We worked well together. That's what I'm lookin' for. That's all I'm lookin' for."

"Yeah, I guess you get enough at home."

Sally snorted, derisively.

"From Larry? Are you kidding me? Ya know how you got broads stashed around town? Well I got some guys stashed around town. Maybe if I covered myself in salad oil and rolled around in five dollar bills, then Larry would get innarested."

Sally couldn't believe she had just said that.

That was the kind of thing she'd only say to Edie.

But she knew she could say just about anything to Eddie, and it wouldn't bother him; he wouldn't think any the less of her; that was one of the things she liked about him.

"So he's your beard. What's the matter with the little prick? Is he a fag, or somethin'?"

"No. I'm too much for him. And he ain't enough for me. I mean, I married the sad little bastard, so, every once in awhile, he gets enough courage to do what he's gonna do, but it's not much."

"Then why the fuck did you marry him?"

"Because, Eddie, a woman ain't like a man, ya know? You can go around havin' a buncha different broads, and everybody will think you're some kinda man. I do that, they'll think I'm some kinda whore. If I'm gonna be livin' my life under public scrutiny, it's at least gotta look like I'm doin' what I'm supposedta do."

"Youse could always get a divorce. Make it look like he was cheatin' on you. And, yunno, I ain't busy."

Sally almost ran the car into a pole.

"Eddie, did you just ask me to marry you?"

"Well, yeah. Why are youse so shocked?"

"Eddie I…I….and you wouldn't care if I was runnin' around town with a whole buncha guys?"

"Sal, if you was married ta me, you might have occasion to screw around with a coupla fans, or a grateful victim or two, but, trust me, most nights, you'd be runnin' right home ta Daddy."

What he said made her want to slap him, but then again, there was no mistaking it, Eddie was a whole lot of man.

But not for her.

"You're real funny, Eddie. And we're almost at your house. So, how's this gonna work? Us goin' on patrol together?"

"You come here every night around 0. Bring your costume. Youse can change in here, it's safe. Then, we go out. I start around 11 and knock off around 2."

Sally parked her car.

"And that's it?"

"Yeah. That's it. You gonna come on in the house, partner?"

Sally wasn't sure if she liked that "partner" jazz, or not, but she didn't say much.

"Sure, Eddie. Why not."

**On the Waterfront. Six Months Later. **

It was the oldest trick in the book, and Sally knew it.

She was a woman, and she was dangerous as hell.

So what had made her trust another broad?

Was it just because she was a woman, too?

Remember what Eddie taught you in the trophy room.

You can't trust anybody, because everyone is the enemy.

Sally struggled against her bonds, cursing herself in silence.

Then the door crashed open, and Hell commenced.

The thing about "Good Lookin'" Mickey Blake was that he could kill in cold blood.

Not so for his son.

Eddie had to be mad to kill.

Unfortunately for New York's criminal element, the Comedian was a young man full of rage, and it didn't take much to bring that rage out in him.

Being a piece of shit criminal, and reminding him of his monster father was usually good enough.

But, this unlucky son of a bitch, he had the unfortunate distinction of having taken the Silk Spectre hostage, and even though Sally wanted no more to do with him, outside of work, and probably never would, that didn't change that Eddie loved her, and that he considered her his girl.

Nothing would ever change that.

He held the man, by his throat, held him off the ground, high in the air, and squeezed.

A little harder, and he knew he'd hear bones start to snap, but he needed this asshole alive to talk.

Eddie threw him against the wall, picked up his crumpled body, dragged him by the hair to the stairs, and shoved his head down on the step so that he was biting the cold concrete.

The Comedian jammed his boot down on the top of the man's head.

He screamed, teeth flew everywhere like little red and white rocks, and blood pooled on the concrete steps.

Eddie hauled the man's broken bloody body to a standing position.

"Tell me where she is, fucko, an' I'll let you live."

"Downstairs! The boss has her downstairs."

"Now, was that so hard?"

Eddie punched him on the bridge of the nose, breaking it, and probably blacking both the man's eyes.

His adversary crumpled to the ground, and Eddie kicked him once in the ribs and once in the stomach.

"Pick up your fuckin' teeth and get outa here."

The man did as he was told, glad that he'd been shown mercy by the Comedian, and he crawled away.

Eddie went down the stairs, and kicked the door open.

There were two dead men on the ground; that was Sally's work.

She didn't go down, easy.

There was a surprised man with a gun at his hip, on the floor, having been knocked over as the oak door blew off his hinges, but Eddie already had his gun in his hand.

He shot the man twice, once in the head, once in the heart.

Sal was tied to a chair.

There was another man there, he put his hands up.

"Sal, did either of these guys try beat youse up or try an' fuck you?"

"They tried real hard, but I fought 'em off. I didn't get beat up this bad fallin' down." She told him.

Eddie flew into a rage.

He grabbed something, a chair, broke it in pieces, he was screaming and swearing, raining blows on the surviving goon. With the chair leg, with his fists, with anything he could touch.

Now, he saw the man dying on the floor, with blood pouring out of his broken body, and the chair leg driven further down his throat than seemed humanly possible, but Eddie was so mad, when he came out of it, he hardly remembered doing it.

There was only one living person in the room besides Sally, and it was another broad, dressed up like a high-class gang moll.

She looked completely horrified as Eddie stalked towards her.

The broad was a real looker, but the Comedian hardly noticed; he just wanted to kill her, and he was thinking of all the ways he could, and with his cock wasn't one of them.

Warm, fresh blood shined slickly on his leather breastplate, and spattered his chest, his face and the steel shields on his shoulders.

He approached the woman with his bloody hands still balled into meaty fists, a few of his knuckles blue and bruised.

"So, you're the boss, huh? What did you want with the Silk Spectre? You tell these guys to soften her up a little? Huh? Is that it?" the Comedian demanded.

The woman forced a mask of composure over her face.

"I'm not afraid of you, big fella. You came down here to save a woman's life, ya won't hurt me. Guys like you, masks, you leave broads alone."

Eddie grabbed her by the throat.

His hand went all the way around; she had a skinny little neck, and it wouldn't have taken much more than a flick of the wrist to snap it.

But the broad had a point, she was unarmed, and she hadn't attacked him.

He would give her a fighting chance at life.

"You don't know me, doll. I leave women alone if they leave me alone. A broad fucks with me, she'll get what a man gets. Now, I'm givin' youse a chance to get the fuck out of here, and you better do it."

Eddie turned his back on the woman, to go and see to Sal.

Sally who had gotten one of her hands free, had the gun out of her bustier.

For a minute, Eddie thought it was him she was going to shoot; he felt the bullet whiz past his ear.

It all happened in the twinkling of an eye, and by the time the Boss had her gun in her hand, presumably to make a hole in Eddie, Sally had put a bullet through her head.

Eddie turned around, to look at the dead woman and her dead goons.

"I guess she must think this armor ain't bulletproof. Dumb cunt. Fuckin' mooks. They never listen." He said.

He put his gun away, stepped over the bodies, and tracking through the pool of blood with his boots on, he knelt down beside Sally and untied her.

"Eddie, you crazy motherfucker! How many people did you kill to get to me?"

"About five. What did they want you for, Sal?"

"To make an example of me."

Eddie grinned at her.

"So, I saved your life?"

"Yeah. And I just saved yours. That's four of them for me."

She stood up, pushed past him, and went up the stairs to the street.

Eddie followed her.

"I can't believe you turned your back on that broad! What, did you think she wasn't going to shoot? You think all women are cream puffs?" she asked.

"No. I just wanted to give you a chance to even up the score. You alright?"

"I'm fine. Jesus, what a fuckin' day. All I wanna do is get outa this costume. After bein' in it since last night, it's really cuttin' me off at the pass. An' you need a bath, Caligula."

"Yeah. In case any of these dead fucks had anythin' contagious. So, it's early yet. After we get cleaned up an' change, y' wanna go get somethin' ta eat? An' a drink?"

"You buyin'?"

"Sure."

"Then I'm drinkin'."

**New York City, 1946- Greenwich Village, twilight, Wednesday **

**II: Sophie**

"You don't understand, Magda. I'm Eddie's first real girlfriend."

"What are you talking about, Sophie? He's a grown man!"

"He's not as grown as you think. Eddie's younger than me, by a little over a year. He's only 22. And before we met in the war, he never had an actual steady girlfriend. He was a back door man when he was a teenager. Had a bunch of broads stashed around town, who liked seeing him for an hour, late at night, now and then. He was in love with a woman he worked with, but he was 16 and she was 20, and he blew it being a stupid, mean, dumb kid. This is Eddie's first bite at the apple."

"What, he's a war hero, he's a superhero, he gets free cars and radio endorsements, and he meets with the president in Washington, and he's only 22?"

"Eddie's had a helluva life. Maybe worse than mine, and that's saying something. We had good years, as a family, Magda. Eddie never did. Besides, I like him. We have a good time together, all the time. He's my old army buddy, you know how that is."

Magda was about to say something else, but heavy footsteps on the stairs gave way to six feet and three or four inches of the aforementioned Eddie Blake, decked out in a gangster-looking suit rather than his usual fatigues or work-clothes.

He looked cheap, mean, and dangerous, and that was probably what her sister liked about him.

"Hiya, Magda. How's Ralph?"

"Mr. Schmidt and I are just fine, thank you. Well, I suppose you and my sister are going to go out and paint the town red. Don't let me stop you. Please tell me you have somebody watching those children you're responsible for?"

"My sister." Eddie chuckled.

"Don't worry, Magda! Goodbye, Magda!"

Sophie hustled her sister out the door, as Eddie sat down on the couch and lit a cigar.

She sat beside him.

"If she wasn't my sister, I'd beat the shit out of her."

"Yeah, ya look in the fuckin' dictionary, and right next to Crazy Annoying Jew Broad, they got Magda's picture." Eddie chuckled.

"She's a stereotype with feet. Someday Ralph is going to kill her, and I'll pay for the best defence attorney in New York. So, are you ready to see the hottest jazz band in the five boroughs?"

"Sure, Soph. I was born ready."

Sophie picked a good joint.

The place was jumping, the band was hot, and people were dancing and drinking and smoking reefers in the john and having a good time.

They were blowing some Dixieland and Eddie and Sophie were really cutting the old rug when that high, shrill whistle blew, letting everybody know that it was time to cheese it, the cops had arrived.

That didn't make no never mind to the former Sgt. Major Sophie Kaufmann, USMC Special Forces, or her dance partner, Major Edward Morgan Blake, USMC Special Forces, both of them late of the Invaders, they both knew the cops wouldn't touch them.

Besides, Sophie knew she was too drunk to drive, and she figured Eddie was, too.

"Keep on playin', boys. It's alright." Eddie told the piano player.

"You got an in with the cops, man?"

"Yeah. I'm Eddie Blake. Relax."

The band kept playing, switching to some hot bebop, as pandemonium broke out.

"See, Soph, this is what pisses me off about the fuckin' cops. It's why I'm an independent. The fuckin' streets out there, they're full of hop pushers an' muggers, an' rapists, an' child molesters, an' all kindsa theivin', murderin' scum. An where are the cops? In here, bustin' a whole lotta people for havin' a good time, lettin' every murderer an' thief in town run riot. Drives me fuckin' crazy." Eddie told Sophie.

"Yeah. I guess I see what you mean."

A cop came down, and Eddie didn't miss a beat.

"Is there a problem, officer?"

"Other than the fact you smell like reefer and you're all over that poor girl, not much, Eddie."

"Awww, everybody in this joint smells like reefer, they been smokin' in the john all night. An you can't arrest me for dancin' with my girl. She ain't no teenager."

"You're doing this just to piss me off, Blake! Well, you've succeeded!"

"Relax, Hollis, old buddy. I ain't dancin' close with a lady ta piss youse off. I happen to like gettin' close up with broads. Maybe you should try it, sometime. Hell, maybe you should try dancin' with a guy. Somebody, ya know?"

"You know what, Eddie? Go shit in your hat!"

The cop and his fellow officers hustled about ten people out of the club, and left.

The band finished the song, and everybody who didn't get arrested clapped, and Eddie and Sophie went back to their table.

When the waitress came around, they got a couple more drinks.

"I take it you knew that copper."

"He's a fuckin' asshole! His idea of fightin' crime is to make sure everybody acts like a fuckin' pussy with no balls, just like him. Fuck him." Eddie snarled.

Sophie knew Eddie well enough to know when he was really mad, after all, they had slept in foxholes together, and blown up bridges, and slit Nazi throats and laughed.

"Is he the one who gave you the shoe?"

"Yeah! The fuckin' prick! Thought he'd move in on Sal. He thought wrong. She ain't with me, but she ain't with him, either."

Sophie could see Eddie's mood getting blacker and blacker.

"C'mon, Eddie. The cops ruined this joint for me. Let's go eat at the Automat. Because, you're really gonna need your strength for tonight." She told him.

"Oh yeah? Ya feelin extra horny, tonight, Soph?"

"Like a junkyard dog under a full moon, Eddie. Let's blow this pop stand."

On the way home, Eddie drove like a priest.

Which was a good change.

For a few months there, he got really out of hand, but, Sophie figured, so had she.

Actually, she was still pretty much out of hand.

It was the second Caddy that GM gave him, he'd crashed the first one into a pole, with both of them in it, about six months before.

But, since he started working with the Silk Spectre and getting good ink instead of bad, Eddie was keeping his nose fairly clean.

Thus, they made it back to her place in one piece, and helped each other get up the stairs.

Sleep was something reserved for people who had easier lives than Sophie and Eddie, after they were done bouncing each other off the walls, they put the radio on and talked and smoked and passed a bottle of red wine between each other, waiting for the few hours of sleep they usually got to sneak up on them.

"You ever go and see that shrink about that shell shock deal, Soph?"

"Nope? You."

"Naaah. I'm used ta nightmares."

"Yeah. Me too. So, how are the kids this week?"

"The usual kid shit. Cast comes off Jimmy's arm on Friday, this comin' Monday I gotta take a night off an' go see Allie do somethin' at the school. How's Max doin?"

"Good. He's almost through with the business college. Two year degree, you know? I guess, when he's done, me and him will get married, and open that place. He understands about you, Eddie. Max doesn't mind Wednesdays."

Eddie took another drink of wine.

"Max is a good guy. So, how's NYU treatin' youse?"

Sophie had dropped out, but she didn't want to tell Eddie that.

"After what I went through, I can't complain. Have you heard from Jimmy, lately?"

"Yeah. After what happened to him in Japan, with his wife an' their baby gettin' murdered, he's about fuckin' done. He went back home, to Canada. He's livin' in on the old homestead, with his father. Workin' as a lumberjack. He says he's seen enough of the world to last him a million years, an' he figures he'll marry an Indian girl, someday, and raise a bunch of little mutants, and never come down out of the mountains again, no matter what happens to the world."

Eddie passed the bottle, Sophie took the last drink, and put it on the night table.

"Sounds like a good idea."

"I kinda wish I had someplace like that ta go, Soph."

"Me too, Eddie. Me too."

And, before either of them realised it, they were asleep.

**Eighth Annual City of New York Superhero's Appreciation Christmas Ball, December, 1946 **

Sophie was beginning to think that everybody was right.

Even Magda.

Because she knew she was out of control.

It had been easier to ignore when Eddie was going off the rails, with her, but after he almost got killed, and started this partnership with the Silk Spectre, he'd toned his act down.

After all, he was a man with a family, he had a reputation to preserve and a job to do.

Reasons to get his act together.

Sophie didn't have any reasons.

Well, there was Max.

And she loved Max, make no mistake, but she couldn't stop, she didn't think she could stop if she wanted to.

But she didn't want to.

And it wasn't just drinking and reefers, anymore.

Eddie didn't know about that.

And he never said much to her about it, about what she was doing to her life.

But, when he came to pick her up for the big superhero shindig and she was obviously high and loaded before she ever got in the car, that really pissed him off.

"Jesus, Christ, Soph, I ain't your mother, an' if the war fucked youse so hard you gotta kill yourself, I can't stop youse, but couldn't youse have tried to stay straight for tonight? Most of these motherfuckers are so square they got corners, an' you got a white ring under your nose. Jesus, you're on the hard stuff now?"

"Who, me? I'm no hophead."

"Oh, just blow, huh? Well that makes me feel better. What the fuck is the matter with you? I ain't said shit to youse because I thought you'd straighten yourself out, but, holy Christ, Soph! You better check yourself into someplace and dry out. I'm not goin' around with no crazy snowblind whack job."

That, of course, was Eddie's way of saying he was concerned.

"I can handle it, Eddie."

"Sure you can. That's what my sister usedta tell me. She ended up a hophead, and OD'd in a fuckin' alley."

"Do we have to talk about this, now?"

"No. What we gotta go now is get through this night without you doin' anything fuckin' crazy. Then, I'm making double goddamn sure youse gets dried out. Enough is too fuckin' much!"

In hindsight, the whole night was a blur.

Sophie got a lot of funny looks from people in masks, and spent a lot of time at the bar.

She could see why Eddie was mad at her, but after a few fortifying snorts in the can, and a few zillion drinks, she was too drunk and to hopped up to care.

"Alright. That's it, you crazy Jew bitch. I'm takin' you home."

But Sophie didn't feel like going home.

"You are, Eddie? You and what fuckin' army, ya dirty Mick sunnuvabitch!"

Everybody was looking at them, now.

"Nice job, Soph. Real cute. Y'wanna finish your drink an' come with me, before one of these nice upright citizens calls the cops?"

"Fuck you, Eddie! I'll go when I'm damn good and ready."

"Oh no you won't! You're goin' right fuckin' now!"

Eddie grabbed Sophie by the arm, and as her other arm was free, she made it a fist, and clocked him right in the face.

He shook it off, and went to try and pick her up and carry her out, and Sophie, swearing like a pirate, reached under her gown for the revolver, and shot him in the leg.

Of course, she hadn't really meant to shoot him, and so, when Eddie grabbed hold of the bar to keep from falling over and she saw the blood on the polished marble floor, Sophie started to scream.

"Eddie! Eddie! I didn't mean it!" she yelled.

Of course, it didn't matter if she meant it, because she had done it, just the same.

Then she just started to scream.

As Eddie tried to haul himself onto a barstool, Superman strode into the picture to take charge.

"Alright, Miss Kaufmann, you'd better give me the gun." He said.

Gently, but firmly

"Don't get a cop, Supes. She didn't mean it. She ain't well. It's shell shock. I was gonna make sure she got some help, yunno, right after Christmas. Ya gotta get her to the hospital. Not to the cops." Eddie gasped.

That was when his partner showed up.

"Eddie! Jesus! Don't just stand there, Larry, go get the goddamn car. How bad is it?"

"Bad. It broke the bone." Eddie gasped.

Sophie continued to scream.

"Will you get her out of here?' Sally said, as she reached for the phone behind the bar.

"What about the Comedian?" Superman insisted.

"He has his own doctor. I'm calling her. Hello, Jack? It's Sally…not too good. Eddie's been shot in the calf, and the bullet went right through the bone, and out the other side. I hope Merrie's home…she is…good…I'm gonna bring him around right away…alright Jack…yeah, helluva evening. Bye."

Sophie realised they were taking Eddie one place and she was going another.

She screamed even louder.

"I'm alright Soph. It's nothin'. I'll come to see youse in the hospital. I unnerstan', Soph. I ain't even mad."

After that, they took Eddie away, and Sophie had a few more screams in her before everything went black.

* * *

Sophie Kauffmann spent Hanukkah and Christmas at the VA Hospital, drying out.

Her sister, and Ralph, and the boys were regular visitors, and Max came every day.

Eddie came to see her Wednesdays.

On crutches.

It was a clean break, there would be no complications.

He was the first one she told.

"So, I know this is gonna sound crazy, but Max's brother has a good thing going with a restaurant, in Tel Aviv. In Israel. He's done with school, now. Me, I dropped out. But Max, he needs the experience. We're going to go there, for awhile. We'll get married, and I joined up with the Israeli army for an 18 month hitch. Then, I'm coming back to New York, and Max and I are going to open a place of our own. You think you can see your way clear to free up Wednesdays for me, once I come home?"

"Sure I can, Soph. I think it's a good idea."

"And I'm going to keep seeing a doctor. A shrink. At least for a little while. You don't think any less of me, do you, Eddie?"

"Fuck no! After what you been through, it's alright for youse to be a little nuts. Hell, I ain't the sanest man in the world, myself."

Anybody else, Sophie would assume they were just mollifying her.

But Eddie wasn't like that.

Even if he managed to get back into Sally's good graces, even if true love did conquer all, Eddie would make a place for her, in his life.

A place called Wednesday.

That was just the way he was.

"Does Sally know how lucky she is, having a guy like you, Eddie? Because I know how lucky I am."

"I dunno what Sal thinks, Soph. I ain't got the right to."

"Yes you do, Eddie. You've spent too many years crucifying yourself for a mistake you made when you were just a boy. Yes, it was a terrible thing you did. But you've bent over backwards to show that woman that the man you are isn't the boy you were, and she won't even consider forgiving you. If it was me, I'd forgive you, Eddie. I understand what it does to you, to be abused and tortured. How it twists you. I know how hard you have to try to overcome it, and not end up like the people who did it to you."

"I hope Sal never has to understand that."

"You're a good man, Eddie Blake. Don't forget that while I'm gone, alright? I'll write to you once I'm settled, and you had better write back."

"Sure I will."

**South Brooklyn, New York, 1947**

**III: Sally**

"…you fuckin' idiot! Where the fuck did you get your license? In a box of fuckin' Cracker Jacks? Why don'tcha haul your ass back to Jersey, ya bum!"

"Hey, pal, why don'cha get outa that goddamn Caddy, an' put your money where your big fat rat trap is!"

"Youse want me to get outta the car? Fine!"

"Eddie, Jesus, let it go."

"Hey, you let it go, Sal! He ain't fuckin' callin' youse out! I'll be right back."

Sally sat in the passenger seat of Eddie's new Cadillac, and smoked a cigarette while he had a fistfight with some meathead driving a box truck.

The meathead in question was about the same size as Eddie, so it was a pretty good fight.

However, being in this situation made Sally ask herself some questions.

What the fuck am I doing in Eddie's car watching him have a childish fistfight with some fucking meathead?

Of course, if she wanted to ask herself questions like that, she could have asked herself how she and Eddie's twin sister, Edie, and to some extent, his second oldest sister, Aggie, became friends, during the war.

And she could ask herself what the fuck she was doing, working with Eddie.

Eddie, of all people.

Maybe it was because he was willing to work with her, and take her seriously as a mask.

As time passed, Sally's dreams of movie stardom began to seem more and more silly and hollow, and despite her celebrity status as America's Sweetheart, the Girl on the B-52's, the actual work began to mean more to her.

She had actually learned to fight, clean and dirty, and she'd begun carrying a gun, in a special holster in her bustier.

Larry liked her working with Eddie; it was good ink.

America's sweetheart, and America's red, white and blue war hero extraordinaire, teaming up to clean up the mean streets of New York City.

And Sally had to admit, not only was she finally getting credit as a mask, she was having a goddamn good time.

But, then again, she and Eddie always did have a good time, together; they were damn good as partners and alright as friends, but that was as far as Sally was letting it go.

Besides, she was going on the kind of missions that Hollis and Rolf and Nelly had always excluded her from, real street-level shit, where you had to get in there and mix it up.

There were times she had Eddie had to literally run for their lives, and fight for their lives, back to back, surrounded by murderous thugs.

That was the stuff people thought of, when they thought of being a superhero.

Fast times, excitement, adventure, side by side with a massive wall of Eddie, closer to him than she was when she was lying next to Larry at night, heart pounding, blood rushing through her veins, ready to take on the world.

But, there was more to it than that.

Eddie wasn't just a brutal, violent man, he was a hell of a detective, too, and she had plenty of opportunity to witness him at work.

Stakeouts, following up leads, turning snitches and milking them, plain old pounding the pavement.

They were even making a movie about it.

With Errol Flynn and Maureen O'Hara.

Larry had tried to get her in, playing herself, but to no avail.

Sally wasn't as upset as you might think she would be.

What Hollywood was going to do to the truth of what it was she and Eddie did in the street, she really didn't want to be part of, after all.

And Eddie, the crazy fuck, he brought a movie star along with them in the car on some of their missions.

Researching the role.

However, as Errol Flynn was apparently also a crazy fuck, he had a helluva time.

Reloading weapons, serving as lookout, driving them out of a shootout, and on more than one occasion, getting in there and helping her and Eddie knock some crooks around.

Then, of course, there was the bar, after patrol.

Sally remembered, sitting there, getting blotto with two extremely good-looking and internationally famous guys, wondering where the line was between drunk and unconscious, and drunk and not remembering what happened when she took them to a motel.

Well, at least she didn't do it.

She had some pride.

Okay, so it wasn't pride, completely.

Mainly, she passed up an even shot at Errol Flynn, who was still one of the best looking sons of bitches on God's Green Earth, at least to her eyes, because of Eddie.

It would kill him.

So, Eddie had a new drinking buddy who was as crazy as he was; God only knew the kind of trouble two nuts like that could make, together.

They took pictures of her and Eddie on-set, advising the stars about their roles, and they were in movie magazines and short reels, the whole nine yards.

Then, the location shooting on the movie wrapped, and the glitz and the glamour were gone, but the street was still there.

The street where there were no cameras grinding away to show what they really did.

And here they were, a year had gone by.

Almost ten years since she met Eddie.

But some things never changed.

Sally snapped out of her reverie.

Eddie and this meathead were still knocking each other around.

Sally got out of the car, and muscled her way between them.

"Jesus H. Christ, Eddie, are you gonna fight with this guy or are you gonna fuck him?" she snapped.

She turned to the meathead, gave him a roundhouse to the jaw, and dropped him, cold.

"Put that piece of shit back in his fuckin' truck and let's go! We don't have all night for you to fuck around, we got work to do!"

Sally got back in the car, and after depositing the unconscious meathead in his car, so did Eddie.

"Boy, you're in a shitty mood, tonight, Sal. Trouble in paradise?"

Sally lit a second cigarette on the butt of the first.

Most of the time she could laugh off Eddie's comments about her sham of a marriage, and his usually astute observations about her extracurricular activities, but not tonight.

"I don't wanna talk about it. Let's just get to work, so I can go to the bar." She said.

Eddie knew her well enough to know that there was something really wrong.

"Hey, Sal, those fuckheads are gonna be in that warehouse tomorrow just like they're gonna be there, tonight."

"Maybe I don't want to talk to you about it, Eddie."

"Who else are you gonna talk to? Edie? Aggie? It'll get back to me, anyway. C'mon. We'll go get somethin' ta eat. It's no good to go drinkin' onna empty stomach."

Over burgers and fries, Sally found herself telling Eddie just what it was that had put her in a pensive mood.

"You know, Eddie, I'm not getting any younger, here. In three years, I'll be thirty. So, I decided that I wanted to have a kid. Larry didn't like the idea, he was worried about me ruining my body, but I know how to train. I can get it back."

Sally lit another cigarette.

"So, we've been trying. For almost six months, now. No good. Of course, Larry blames it on me. He's accused me of all kinds of things. Ruining my body with back-alley abortions. Or VD. That sunnuvabitch! I been very careful, yunno. I never had an abortion, and I never caught VD, and my doctor says there's nothing wrong with me. I could have ten kids. It's Larry who's shooting blanks. He won't admit it. And he wants to fucking adopt. Why should I have to adopt a kid with a guy who's a joke when my marriage is a joke, when I'm perfectly capable of having one of my own!"

Sally waited for Eddie to say something, but he didn't.

Not right away.

"My offer still stands, Sal."

"I already toleja I can't. See, Eddie, I'm not the marrying kind. I like to go out with men, have a few drinks and a good time. I don't wanna settle down with just one guy. I mean, I'm no whore but, I work hard. I deserve it. And I'm careful, and it's not like I'll just go with anybody. But, you and I both know a woman can't get away with that. Especially not a woman in the public eye. I mean, I knew that when I married Larry. Hollis asked me around the same time. But, I would have felt horrible about running around on Hollis, and it would have broken his heart. Larry doesn't know what I do with my free time and he doesn't care, as long as the money keeps rolling in. It's a business arrangement."

"You wouldn't hafta feel bad about it, Sal. I mean just because you're married to somebody, if you ain't the forsakin' all others kind and neither are you, well, then there ain't no problem. Not my side, anyway."

"I can't marry you, Eddie. We'd kill each other inside of a month. Jesus…why is it when you put on a mask, there's this unwritten law that says you hafta give up on everything that most people take for granted? Yunno what I mean?"

"Yeah, Sal. I do. I mean, I'll be seein' Sophie on Wednesdays, an' I guess there'll always be room for my crazy ass in her life, on Wednesdays, but she's married to Max Grossmann, an' they'll have a decent life. I mean, my Ma died, I hadda kill Pop, their kids are almost raised. I fought a goddamn war, I helped save the fuckin' world, so where's my piece of the pie? How the fuck did I end up with the fuckin' crumbs?"

Sally laughed at the analogy.

That's what you ended up with when you were a mask.

The people you fought it out with.

"You're right, Eddie. We do the dirty work, and everybody else gets the pie and what do we get? The fuckin' crumbs. And, nothin' for nothin', but you gotta point. Those fuckin' crumbs we're after, they'll be there tomorrow night. Fuck it. Let's go get drunk. If we end up on the cover of the _Post_, it's like Larry says. There's no such thing as bad publicity. I'm buyin', tonight."

"Then I'm drinkin'."

**Letter From Sally Jupiter to Laurie Juspeczyk**

Dear Laurie,

If you're reading this letter, either I've passed on, or you've found out that Eddie is your father while I'm still living.

You're probably already angry and confused on one hand, and, on the other, I suppose you understand now why Eddie played such a big role in your life growing up.

I'm sure what you've heard about me and Eddie is what I like to call the official rumor.

The one that goes like me and him got together one afternoon in 1948 and made you, and that was our moment in time.

Well, you already know that our moment lasted a long time after that.

What you don't know, is that it began before that.

I always loved your father, that's why what he did to me in the trophy room hurt me so much, because I loved him, even then, and I had only known him for about six months.

Even though half the time, well, more than half the time, I couldn't live with him, still, I never could live without him.

And, being a young woman in the heyday of women's lib, you can't understand what things were like in the thirties, forties, and fifties for a woman who didn't want to stay, as they say, barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen.

Nobody, least of all me, ever expected that I would blossom into a real crimefighter out of being a tough-talking burlesque dancer and would-be starlet.

In a way, I had Eddie to thank for that, too.

That night in the trophy room changed my life, and it wasn't just the attempted rape and the beating, it was the look of disgust Rolf gave me while I was lying on the floor, bleeding.

I could see in his eyes he thought it was my fault.

That I had brought myself to this shameful state, playing Little Red Riding Hood with the Big Bad Wolf.

In the months following that night, I really stopped to think.

If I wanted to be a starlet, well, I should pack my ass up and move to LA, and get on the casting couch while my name recognition was still good.

But then, I thought about that.

First, there were about a million other girls with the same big idea.

And if I was just going to start handing it out to goddamn anybody just for a walk-on part, maybe a walk-on part in a B movie, well, I might as well have just let a guy I was starting to think of as my boyfriend give me the time in the Minutemen's trophy room.

But, how many women were superheroes?

I was tough, but I wasn't tough enough.

That was where I went wrong with Eddie.

If I had been tough enough to do the job I was playing at, I would have wiped the fucking floor with him; I would have had both the ability and the inclination.

Can you imagine him trying that on Liv Napier?

She probably would have beat him senseless and then laughed at him if he couldn't get it up.

Of course, knowing your father, a little thing like a few smacks in the head wouldn't put him off.

If I had been tough enough to give him a damn good beating, a bad enough beating he would have been more worried about staying conscious rather than staying stiff, he would have crawled away to lick his wounds. But after that, the crazy prick would have had some respect for me, and he wouldn't have treated me like I was some broad.

He would have treated me like I was a mask, too.

So, I decided that I was still going to be a big star, but not as some dime-a-dozen starlet who was pretty much a glorified call girl in the studio meat factory.

No, I was going to be famous for being the Silk Spectre, superhero.

While your father was off fighting World War II, proving to himself and the world that he was more than a punk kid in a yellow boiler suit, I was home, proving to myself and the world that I wasn't just talking the talk, I was walking the walk.

I actually learned how to fight, I started carrying a gun, and I got involved in really giving the crooks the business, as well as getting into the business of being a famous superhero.

That's pretty much what was between Larry and me.

Business.

It didn't look right, my not being married, so I married my manager.

He was what the queers used to call a beard.

Anyway, by 1945, Eddie and I were both at the top of our game.

We were young, we were good-looking, and we were unbelievably famous and celebrated.

But, we both had a problem.

Eddie's problem was that he was Eddie.

Your father wasn't always the man he was when you came to know him; when he got back from the war he was a pretty crazy kid, and who could blame him?

All his life, he had been poor, miserable, overworked and underpaid, like a lot of people, but unilike a lot of people he'd also been horrifically mistreated and abused.

Now, all the sudden, he had fame, he had money, and everybody loved him.

So, he went a little crazy.

There's a reason Eddie was the only person who could get Liv Napier in line.

For part of 1945 and 1946, he used to be just like her.

They say there's no such thing as bad publicity, but Eddie was making the papers two or three times a week.

The cops would catch him in a hotel room with an unbelievable number of broads and a brick of grass.

Your father, he was really some kind of man. He'd take two or three girls home with him, and send them home tired, and wake up the next morning ready for three more. If you've inherited what he had, cupcake, I can understand why you picked an indestructible and presumably indefagetible nuclear reactor for a boyfriend.

But, anyway, the point is, Eddie was way out of control.

They'd pull him over for speeding and he'd be so drunk he fell out of the car when the cop opened the door.

He'd go out and get unbelievably drunk and tear a bar to pieces and get into a fistfight with somebody and put them in the hospital. Or he'd get in a fistfight with ten guys and all of them, including him, would end up in the hospital.

The only reason the cops didn't find him lying in the street half the time like they did Liv was because Eddie still had his brothers and sisters at home to look after, and he always made sure he got there before he'd pass out.

But, on Wicked Wednesdays, as the scandal sheets called them, him and Sophie Grossmann, who was still Sophie Kauffmann, they really knew how to paint the town red.

The cops would go and raid some joint in Harlem, and Eddie and Sophie would be there, drunk and stoned out of their minds.

Hell, the paint wasn't dry on his new Caddy that GM gave him before Eddie wrapped it around a telephone pole in the Village.

They ran a picture in the _Post_ of the wreckage, and said it was a miracle Eddie or Sophie survived, let alone escaped with minor injuries.

Your Uncle Hollis told me he raided a place, once, and while he was checking the johns to see if anybody was trying to hide in the stalls from the law, he found Eddie and Sophie trying to do something in a sink that you don't usually do in a sink.

Trying, because they had both passed out in the process and were completely unconscious, so far out of it that Sophie had to be rushed to the hospital to have her stomach pumped.

Eddie had no idea where he was; he wandered around yelling and waving his arms around with his underwear and his pants around his ankles, and Uncle Hollis actually had to put his clothes on him and take him away in a police car.

Then, he got violent.

He beat his head against the window of the police car until he smashed through it, and Hollis said it took him and seven cops to get cuffs and leg irons on Eddie and get him in a cell; they were afraid to let a doctor in to look at him because he was raving and out of his mind.

Uncle Hollis ended up calling Rolf and Nelly, and the three of them went in there and held Eddie down long enough that a doctor could come in and shoot him up with enough dope to knock out an elephant, so that he could get his bloody head stitched up and bandaged, and get checked out.

It turned out somebody had put monkey tranquilizers in his drink, to kill him.

The _Post_ didn't report all of that incident, but they reported enough.

People had a lot of goodwill towards Eddie because he was in the Invaders, and he was a Great American Hero, but he was spending it, fast.

My problem was that I had risen to the level of being a damn good mask, but nobody would take me seriously because I was a woman.

It was Hollis' idea I retire when I got married, and when I tried to keep working, he and Nelly and Byron and Rolf did their damndest to keep me out of anything meaningful.

They did the same thing to Ursula, and it used to make the both of us furious.

Then, Eddie came to a Minutemen meeting one night and asked me, on a whim, to go on a serious mission with him.

I think he was surprised I wasn't just a cupcake, anymore.

Anyway, as Eddie's always been a hell of a lot more stable than Liv, bless her crazy heart, and when he woke up in the hospital, sick as a dog, to a splitting headache, ten stitches, and the headlines in the _Post_ about his and Sophie's latest debacle, he realised two things.

One was that he was going the way his mother and father had, down the road to hell paved with booze, and if he didn't put on the breaks he was going to destroy everything he'd worked for.

The other was that his good name was in the shitter, and he was going to have to do something to rectify that.

One thing about your nutty father, the son of a bitch was always crazy like a fox.

It was his idea.

I had a nice, clean reputation, but I couldn't get anyone to work with me, and his reputation needed a big boost and he was willing to give it a chance.

It worked like a charm.

Me and Eddie working together as masks, as famous and celebrated as we were in 1946, it was a big, big, big thing.

We both started getting good ink.

I was able to do my job, Eddie got his shit together and so did Sophie, and Larry got his cut of lots and lots and lots of my money.

Everything was roses.

There was only one problem.

The elephant in the living room.

Under all of our bullshit and pretence and politics, beside the camaraderie between masks, and aside from the fact that I did, and still do, think that although there's good in Eddie, and that he's actually a good man, that he's mad, bad, and dangerous to know and I could only take him in small doses, one fact remained.

I loved Eddie, and he loved me, and we'd take anything that resembled being together.

You were around for round two of the Eddie and Sally show, so you know how it goes.

Eddie and I get together, we see each other every once in awhile, then one of us does something unforgivable, and we quit speaking to each other for months.

Then, eventually, the whole thing starts over again.

Well, you witnessed it when we were grown up, mature people in our thirties and forties and beyond, and by then, we had you in common, and the sad knowledge that sometimes, love just isn't enough, and that although we would never really be apart, we weren't meant to be together.

Eddie met the woman the Devil made for him in hell in the second act of his life, as I write this, Liv Napier is still "his girl".

Which is funny, because, as I write this, Eddie is sleeping in my bed in the other room, he's visting with me here in LA after coming home from some mission in Southeast Asia, and Liv is probably painting New York City red with Tony Stark, or maybe off in the woods on one of her periodic survival treks with Jimmy Howlett.

That makes two guys Liv Napier and I have in common, because I've been seeing Tony, here and there, since 1966.

You may discover this for yourself, someday, cupcake, but let me tell you, love is complicated, and it isn't always I love him and he loves me and that's all there is to it.

My point is, the first act of the Eddie and Sally show, the one that played itself out between 1946 and 1948, that was the big show.

Eddie and I were both in our twenties, and like most people in our twenties we didn't know shit about anything and thought we knew it all, and we had no idea that neither hello or goodbye were forever.

And that is why your birth in 1949 was even more of a miracle than you might think it was.

Eddie and me have every reason to hate each other, but we have every reason to love each other, too, and we do them both together.

The first time we got together and blew up, we blew up big.

Like a hydrogen bomb.

**Thirsty's Show Bar, Manhattan, New York City, 1947**

**II: Sally**

It was somewhere in the area of midnight, and Sally Jupiter was somewhere in the area of completely blotto.

Her hairdo was becoming undone, her lipstick was smeared over her face, and one of her breasts was about ready to fall out of her shirt.

It was a warm summer night, and she was both sweating profusely and drinking heavily, and every guy in the place would have been ogling her, if it wasn't for the fact that she wasn't alone.

Parked on the barstool beside her was a mountain of Eddie Blake, in blue work pants, combat boots, and a GI- Issue fatigue A-line undershirt, with clanking dog tags on a chain.

He was not as drunk as Sally, and he was watching over her, to make sure she was alright.

"Hey, Sal, your tits are almost hangin outa your shirt."

"What do I care?" Sally said.

But Sally wasn't alright, she was anything but alright; she was literally crying into her beer while Eddie was trying to get her to fix her shirt.

She hardly knew what she was saying, she was blubbering about Larry, and her empty shell of a marriage, and the dreams she had when she was younger, and the trophy room, and a whole bunch of other things, until she had her face against Eddie's shirt and she was just literally weeping.

"Eddie, my fuckin' life is shit. Workin' with you is all I got, and you're the fuckin' son-of-a-bitch who beat the fuck outa me and tried to fuck me in my ass onna floor inna trophy room."

"Sal, I never woulda done that to youse! That's the lowest, filthiest, most fuckin' disgustin' thing you can do to a person! Make a punk out of 'em. I wouldn't fuckin' do that to anybody. Death's too good for somebody who would do somethin' like that!"

Drunk as she was, Sally could tell she'd touched a nerve, and she believed him.

"You know what I mean, Eddie. I didn't mean it literally. You're a no good lousy Mick bastard. But you're all I got. All I ever really had. An' I hate you. I hate your stinkin' guts. You made me what I am. On the other hand, I don't hate ya, at all. We have some laughs. You're my partner. My friend. An' if I wasn't a mask, Jesus, I'd prob'ly been on Hollywood Boulevard blowin' spades for money to buy smack, by now."

"Sal, you're drunk. Ya need to go home."

"I got no fuckin' home. The street's my home."

"Well, you gotta go someplace. C'mon. Let's get youse outa this dump."

Sally was too drunk to struggle more than a little, she leaned against the wall of Eddie and let him load her into the car, and later load her out again.

He took her to some apartment she'd never been to, and made a phone call.

It was Sally's chance to leave, to flee, but she was so drunk she was completely helpless; he could have done anything he wanted to her, finish what he started in the trophy room, but he didn't.

He took off her shoes and put her on the couch, put a pillow under her head and covered her with a blanket, and put a trash can by the couch.

"Where the fuck am I?"

"My apartment. I'm pretty drunk, too, Sal. I gotta go lay down before I fall down. If you need me, just yell real loud. G'night."

Eddie staggered off to bed.

Sally had to throw up a few times, and she started to feel really sick and dizzy, like she was going to pass out.

"Eddie! Eddie, I think I'm gonna die! Eddie!"

Sally really did feel like she was going to die; she threw up so much that she passed out, and came to a few moments later in the bathroom.

Eddie was washing her face with a washrag.

"I think you better come an' sleep with me in the bedroom, Sal. You ain't doin' so good."

"Can I trust you, Eddie?"

"Sal, it took me almost ten years to get you to trust me this much. You think I'd throw it all away so's I could fuck you when you was passed out drunk? That ain't what I had in mind."

Sally knew she was helpless, and it frightened her, to be helpless, and with Eddie, but she knew she could trust him.

"Okay, Eddie. You gotta help me, though."

"I gotcha, Sal."

It made her feel better that he did.


End file.
